By Ken Rosenthal, Grant Brisbee, Andrew Baggarly and Eno Sarris
Free agent outfielder Jung Hoo Lee is signing with the San Francisco Giants, a league source confirmed Tuesday. MLB Network first reported the signing. Here's what you need to know:
- Lee, 25, was the 2022 South Korean KBO League MVP and played for the Kiwoom Heroes.
- His 2023 season was cut short due to a broken ankle, but he still slashed .318/.406/.455 with six home runs and 45 RBIs.
- Lee ranked No. 16 on The Athletic's list of top MLB free agents.
What else you should know about Lee
Over the last three seasons, Lee has posted an OPS about 32 percent better than the rest of the KBO – in line with what Jung Ho Kang did before he signed with the majors, and better than what Ha-Seong Kim did before had achieved with the Padres after moving to the USA. His 2022 season included 23 home runs, although he has only one other double-digit season.
Lee carries a booking fee that pays 20 percent of the first $25 million, 17.5 percent of the next $25 million and 15 percent of anything over $50 million.
For the sake of their fans and their own health, the Giants couldn't afford to continue to finish second in the bidding process for every free agent they coveted. And super agent Scott Boras is a bloodhound when it comes to tracking down a team in desperation.
On the day that San Francisco officially failed to sign Shohei Ohtani, it should come as no surprise that San Francisco quickly signed the Korean star outfielder to a contract on Tuesday. And it shouldn't have been a surprise that the deal's guaranteed money — $113 million over six years — far exceeded industry estimates.
The Giants' total investment in Lee is nearly $132.8 million when factoring in the nearly $19 million posting fee payable to KBO's Kiwoom Heroes, where Lee's bat-to-ball skills shone while establishing himself as KBO's best player. Lee can also opt out of his contract with San Francisco after the fourth season.
Because the release fee is calculated as a percentage of the money guaranteed in the contract, the Giants essentially faced a 15 percent salary penalty that they might never pay Lee if he opts out of the final two years of his contract. That's how motivated San Francisco was to improve a roster that still needs a lot of work to compete in a crowded National League West.
The Giants made multiple scouting trips to Korea to evaluate Lee and even sent GM Pete Putila in October to witness what was essentially a farewell cameo from Kiwoom. This plate appearance was the only one Lee recorded after breaking his ankle in July. He appears to be fully healed and has been at the Boras Corp headquarters for the past few days. conducted agility drills for interested teams in Southern California.
But there's a reason Lee's camp waited until last week to open its official 30-day release window.
It's worth noting that Lee's deal is still pending. That's no small feat considering shortstop Carlos Correa's $365 million contract fell through last winter because of issues with a decade-old ankle fracture that came up during his physical exam.
As long as the Lee deal goes through, San Francisco will have an outfielder who is expected to be an average defender in center field and may not hit more than 15 home runs. But his contact skills and ability to avoid strikeouts piqued the Giants' interest. —Andrew Baggarly, Giants senior writer
Lee is exactly what the Giants were looking for
San Francisco has had to get younger and sportier for some time. There has long been a lack of a hitter who can hit the ball with the bat, with only two qualified .300 hitters in the last decade (Buster Posey). It was looking for a committed midfielder who could support the defense by allowing the outfielders to play in the corners where they can best excel.
Is Lee all of that? Well, my friend, that's the $113 million question. It's the $132.8 million question when you include the publishing fee. The Giants undoubtedly believe he has all of these qualities, and if they are right, it would have been difficult to create a better player under laboratory conditions.
Keith Law had the 25-year-old Lee as his No. 10 free agent in his rankings, and most people agree he should be a major league starter, but there are doubts about his ability to be above-average defensively at center to be good. However, the contract San Francisco gave Lee was more than double Tim Britton's typical forecast, so it appears the market is robust.
Boras clients typically don't leave money on the table, but compared to expectations, this is a monocle-spinning contract, even by Boras standards.
If Lee is as good as the Giants hope, he will be exactly what the franchise needs – a young All-Star caliber player who can excite fans again. After a few years of random slow guys hitting .240/.340/.410, here is a player with the potential to do much more than that. He'll be someone to put on billboards.
Maybe someone can give him an animal nickname and sell hats. Don't be surprised if you look it up in a month and people call it an otter or the great capybara for reasons you'll never understand.
Or, after taking a closer look at his defense, Lee could be relegated to cornerback and remind San Francisco fans of Denard Span's two-year tenure with the team. Not exactly bad at the plate, but not entirely good and completely out of place in the middle of the field.
However, they will be relying on youth, and this wasn't the offseason to worry about taking risks. The Giants have been an absurdly boring team in each of the last two seasons. Here's a step – a big one – towards solving this problem. – Grant Brisbee, Giants beat writer
Pros and cons of signing Lee
The bad news first. Trackman exit velocity stats for Lee were below average in Korea even compared to his peers. In the KBO, Lee had a lower maximum exit velocity than Ha-Seong Kim, and only five qualified above-average starters last year had less power than Kim in the MLB. Lee also hit the ball hard (over 95 mph) less often than Kim.
The good news is that he did this with top-notch plate skills – Lee struck out six percent of the time and walked 13 percent of the time in his final season in the KBO. Kim's strikeout rate has also been trending quite well, so it's possible that Lee is striking out less than 10 percent of the time, something only a single qualified hitter managed to do last year, and his name was Luis Arraez.
So when you take advantage of those contact skills and those power skills, you get a range of comparable player types. Arraez is a bit of a unicorn, but other names include Steven Kwan, Andrew Benintendi and Adam Frazier. One of the best competitions comes from 2022, when Brendan Donovan achieved almost the same marks as Lee.
Getting Donovan to play center field in San Francisco might sound like a terrible deal for the Giants, but these teams are mostly above-average players in the major leagues, and that kind of production is worth around $18 million, according to most. Dollars per year “worth”. current research. You'll also notice that none of the comps are midfielders. If you could sign a Kwan who can play in midfield, you'd pay a pretty penny for it. – Eno Sarris, senior MLB writer
Required reading
(Photo: Yuichi Yamazaki /AFP via Getty Images)